D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Yardiff]

Just to add to this, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]:

It turns out a moon druid doesn't appeal to me. I can't find a hook for this character's personality that appeals to me. So I just built my character from concept. I kept one aspect from the druid - the knight background - because it's a good fit with the party's two nobles, with one of them heing a paladin in plate.

And I found an amusing thing in the noble background's personality/ideals/bonds/flaws: I selected all these things about being noble and respectful towards both those above and below my station, and then bang! the flaw is "Secretly, I believe I'm better than everyone else."

Somehow, that inspired me to create a smarmy, suckup of a knight in shining armor (Like Stifler from American Pie, or Whitey from Leave it to Beaver). But not a fighter.

In order to get the heavy armor proficiency, and to show the outward sign of being a hero of the common people and a servant for the greater good, I started with a level of Life Cleric. The rest is all enchanter wizard.

To wear the plate effectively, I need a 15 strength.
To multiclass from cleric I need a 13 wisdom.
To be effective as a wizard (especially with the save or suck enchantment stuff) I need as high an Intelligence as I can get.
Then there's the everpresent need for Constitution.

But I can essentially dump Dex since I'll be wearing plate.
And the Charisma is meant to be low because he's only supposed to be charming when working his magic.

This seems like a MAD concept, right? I feel I made it work just fine with the Standard Array.

I don't really know what an enchanter needs with a 20 AC (plate and shield), but I've got it.

So what races fit this concept or can it only be successfully build with one or two? And what are the final stats for this concept?

 

[Oofta]

Still waiting on a reply, from anyone, on this statement.

If you roll 4d6 drop lowest for ability scores, the average array you end up with is 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 8 (a 25 point buy).

So what races fit this concept or can it only be successfully build with one or two? And what are the final stats for this concept?

Effectiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Other than a race that added to dex or charisma, just about any race would work. A variant human with 15, 14, 14, 12, 8, 8 could add +1 to to wisdom and +1 to either strength or intelligence. Or don't worry about the 15 strength at 1st level since you aren't going to be finding plate armor for a while anyway and take a feat that adds +1 to strength at 5th level.

Of course if it's any race I'd build a mountain dwarf to get medium armor proficiency, skip the level of cleric and take a feat to get heavy armor at 4th.

Most of the time you'd be better off with point buy if this is your concept unless you get lucky.

 

[Yardiff]

If you roll 4d6 drop lowest for ability scores, the average array you end up with is 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 8 (a 25 point buy).

While this is a reply to my post it doesn't really answer the post by @Razamis. Does it say anywhere that if you roll above average that you should re-roll because your character is OP for 5e? Or that only average stats are what every module or adventure path is base on so any above or below should be considered overpowered or underpowered?

 

[Oofta]

If you roll 4d6 drop lowest for ability scores, the average array you end up with is 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 8 (a 25 point buy).
QUOTE]

While this is a reply to my post it doesn't really answer the post by [MENTION=6909244]Razamis[/MENTION]. Does it say anywhere that if you roll above average that you should re-roll because your character is OP for 5e? Or that only average stats are what every module or adventure path is base on so any above or below should be considered overpowered or underpowered?

What's the point of your question? The game has to be balanced on something, the assumption is that they balanced it against average scores for 4d6 drop lowest/point buy.

How else do you envision that it could possibly work? The game has a DM. The DM may have to adjust difficulty based on players and the options they've taken.

 

[Yardiff]

Just felt like ranting about random stuff. Sorry.

But I do dislike statements at the only fair way to play is to use point-buy (27) or standard array and to me that was what @Razamis's statement was saying.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The game has to be balanced on something,

Not if it has D&D on the cover...

the assumption is that they balanced it against average scores for 4d6 drop lowest/point buy.

Which is, apparently really close to standard array. That's interesting.
But, with a sample size of only 30 (5 characters), a given group isn't likely to all cleave to that average...

 

[Yardiff]

My opinion...

Everything is balanced around the PCs having AT LEAST the equivalent of the standard array.

 

[Lanefan]

So just out of curiosity and because of some of the conversations, I wrote a quick app that generated 6 ability scores using 4d6 drop lowest and then ran that through a loop a million times and figured out the average*.

The result? Average array: 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 8

That's really interesting, and quite unexpected mathematically.

15-14-12-11-10-8 gives a total of 70 and an average of 11.67, over half a point lower than the 12.24 mathematical average of 4d6x1 that leads one to expect a total of about 73.44 - for simplicity let's round this down to 73 - which means on average there's over three stat points missing. Where did they go?

Rounding error is a possibility for some of it, I suppose, and if the difference in averages was less than half a point it could represent all of it. But the difference is over half a point - .57 to be more precise - meaning this variance can't all be attributed to simple rounding error.

*EDIT: in case it's not clear, I generated an array and then sorted descending, so the 15 is the average of the high numbers for a set of 6 numbers, 8 is the average low.

Did your app by any chance record the actual "rolls" so as to give a total of how many times each number from 3 to 18 came up, what the average was, etc.? If the average of all the actual rolls was 12.24 or very close (with a sample size of 6 million it should be about bang on) then there must be some sort of way-beyond-my-pay-grade statistical weirdness that makes those three points vanish into thin air.

Curious.

Lanefan

 

[Maxperson]

Still waiting on a reply, from anyone, on this statement.

That statement made by [MENTION=6909244]Razamis[/MENTION] is provably false. 4d6 drop the lowest is not just the first stat creation method, it's the default method with the other two specifically being optional rules. There can be no rational assumption that people are going to use optional rules, and it's stupid to balance the game around optional rules. If his statement were true, the array would be the default, and point buy and rolling would have been the optional methods.

 

[Maxperson]

How else do you envision that it could possibly work? The game has a DM. The DM may have to adjust difficulty based on players and the options they've taken.

The average roll is 12-13, so they probably balanced it against those numbers rather than an array of numbers that will probably be incorrect when rolled individually. That array will only be true when rolled a large number of times, which isn't going to happen in any campaign. By balancing it against a 12, they avoid that issue.